Technical and Market Trends
The telecommunication environment is in full evolution and has changed considerably this recent years. The principal reason has been the spectacular progress realized in the communication technology:
the maturing of fiber optical transmission. High speed rates can now be sustained with very low bit error rates. PA1 the universal use of digital technologies within private and public telecommunications networks. PA1 The emergence of high speed transmissions entails an explosion in the high bandwidth connectivity. PA1 the increase of the communication capacity generates more attractive tariffs. PA1 A higher flexibility is offered to the users to manage their growth through a wide range of connectivity options, an efficient bandwidth management and the support of new media. PA1 Once sampled and digitally encoded, voice, video and image derived data can be merged with pure data for a common and transparent transport. PA1 Doing old applications better, PA1 Optimizing communication networks, PA1 Doing new applications. PA1 end user network protocols including Ethernet, Tocken Ring, APPN, FDDI, OSI, ISDN, ATM . . . , and PA1 real time (steady stream traffic such as voice and video) and non real time (bursty nature traffic such as interactive data) transmissions. PA1 A total of 36 ms might be needed for the packetization and play-out functions at the end points. PA1 About 20 ms is the unalterable propagation delay needed, say, to cross the United States. PA1 There remains 44 ms for all the intra-node processing time as the packet moves through the network. In a 5 nodes network, each node would have about 8 ms for all processing time including any queueing time. In a 10 nodes network, each node would have about 4 ms. PA1 a very short packet processing time, PA1 a very high throughput, PA1 an efficient queue and buffer management, PA1 limited number of instructions per packet, PA1 a very large flexibility to support a wide range of connectivity options. PA1 the adapter function, and PA1 the access protocol. PA1 means for buffering (132) said data packets, PA1 means for identifying said data packets in said buffering means, PA1 means for queueing (FIG. 15) in storing means (131) said identifying means in a single instruction, PA1 means for dequeueing (FIG. 16) from said storing (131) means said identifying means in another single instruction, PA1 means for releasing said buffering means, PA1 an arithmetical and logical (ALU) operation on said identifying means, PA1 a memory operation on said storing means, and PA1 a sequence operation.
In relation with these new emerging technologies, the offer of the telecommunication companies, public or private, are evolving:
Abundant, cheap communications means that many potential applications that where not possible before because of cost are now becoming attractive. In this environment, four generic requirements are expressed by the users: